The Biological Imperative

Shougat Dasgupta reflects on the politics of parenthood. And loving your children

- Shougat Dasgupta

WHEN I WAS GOING TO become a father, being prone to self-aggrandisement, I thought of Philip Larkin’s famous lines. “They fuck you up, your mum and dad”, he wrote in “This Be the Verse”, allowing that our mums and dads had had the same done to them by their parents, “Who half the time were soppy-stern / And half at one another’s throats.” Man, Larkin concludes in a final verse that combines profound pessimism with demotic jokiness, “hands on misery to man / It deepens like a coastal shelf. / Get out as early as you can, / And don't have any kids yourself."

Soppy-stern and half at one another's throats described my parents. But I didn’t feel their marriage—strange and dysfunctional as it appears to me now (even in middle age, a childish censoriousness marks my judgements about my parents’ normal lives, their normal mistakes)—had much effect on me. I didn’t feel they had much effect on me. My mother will tell a different story. And my father isn’t around to defend himself. But I don't remember being “parented” so much as being left to get on with it myself. Were values and family histories passed down at the dinner table? Not that I remember. Were there any meaningful or revelatory chats with either mater or pater? Not that I remember. Did they take much interest in what I was interested in or did I care much what they did or thought? Not that I remember.